


Compliments to the Chef

by Aramley



Category: Tennis RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Cooking, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-11
Updated: 2010-10-11
Packaged: 2017-12-17 20:01:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/871430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aramley/pseuds/Aramley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It’s late and service is finally winding down when Xisca shouts across the kitchen, "Rafa, someone wants to pay compliments to the chef!"</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Compliments to the Chef

It’s late and service is finally winding down when Xisca shouts across the kitchen, "Rafa, someone wants to pay compliments to the chef!"

Rafa frowns, swipes an errant drop of chocolate sauce from a dessert plate just heading out, and pretends not to have heard her. He avoids compliments whenever he can.

“Did you hear me?” Xisca says, appearing suddenly at his elbow. “Compliments!”

“Tell them I’m busy,” Rafa says, still ignoring her. Someone on desserts is not cutting the torte the way he likes, and he frowns at the plates lined up on the counter.

“They look amazing; let it go,” Xisca says, reading his mind. “If you don’t come out here I’m going to drag you.”

Rafa sighs heavily, and throws his tea towel over his shoulder. With Xisca, he knows from long experience, it’s always better to capitulate early. “I hate when people do this,” he grumbles. “You should accept them for me.” It would be mostly justified, too: this London restaurant is really her baby.

“Trust me, darling,” Xisca says with exasperated affection as she puts a hand to his forearm to draw him away, like she isn’t a full three years younger than him. “You will want to meet this one.”

“Is it another English footballer?” He doesn’t know how they have time to play any football with all the eating at his restaurant they seem to do.

“It is not an English footballer,” Xisca says, with a sly smile, pushing the swing door to usher him out of the kitchen into the hallway. “Rafael Nadal,” she says, gesturing across the hall and saying in English, “Roger Federer would like to pay his compliments.”

Rafa stares. In Manacor, in his room in his mother’s house which she keeps pristine like a shrine to his awkward teenage years, there is a poster of Roger Federer plastered on one wall. And now, the object and guardian of his adolescent longing is in front of him, a demigod in smart-casual; is actually stepping forward with one hand outstretched and saying, “Rafael Nadal, it’s great to meet you,” and automatically Rafa reaches out and takes his hand and then he is _touching Roger Federer._

He thinks he knew how to speak English once. Now the only word in any language is _beautiful_.

“The meal was amazing,” Roger says, while he shakes Rafa’s hand with his firm grip, his long fingers. Rafa can feel the callouses. It is probably the best moment of his life. “Really, probably the best I ever ate in London.”

From somewhere, Rafa dredges a sentence. “What you order?”

“Paella,” Roger says, smiling. “With the seafood.”

“Ah,” Rafa says, with a smile, because he’s on safer territory now, with food. “Is very good choice. But for the best seafood you must come only to Mallorca, no?”

He can almost _feel_ Xisca gearing up for a spiel about _local produce_ but Roger only laughs and says, “Well, you know, it’s difficult, with the tour. And since I was already here for Wimbledon.” He shrugs, and pushes back the soft fall of his hair from his forehead with one hand. His hair is shorter than on Rafa’s poster, too short to tie back now, but it looks so good that Rafa is suddenly and absurdly conscious of his own hair, damp with sweat under his bandanna from the punishing heat of the kitchen. He reaches up and tucks a few odd curling strands back behind his ears, nervously. If the staff could see him now.

“You play amazing against Nishikori,” Rafa says. “I think for sure you gonna win this year, no?”

Roger smiles. “You’re a tennis fan?”

“For sure,” Rafa says, and ignores the strangled cough covering an undignified snicker from Xisca. “I play some tennis when I am young.”

“Oh yeah?” Roger says, politely interested, but probably every second person wants to tell him how they played tennis when they were younger, and if only they’d stuck at it, what might have been. Rafa just shrugs, and decides not to tell him about the tournaments.

“I watch you play always,” Rafa says, and then hears himself, and tries to amend, “not in the way that, uh, uh.” He casts a desperate look in Xisca’s direction and she supplies, “Creepy?” and Rafa says, “the creepy way. Not in the creepy way.”

Roger just laughs and says, “Well, I’m a big fan of yours, too. Maybe I can get tickets for you to come to the tournament.”

“If you come to Mallorca, I be sure to get you a table,” Rafa offers, in return.

“I’ll try and take you up on that,” Roger says, smiling, and there’s a long moment where they’re just looking at each other, that somehow isn’t awkward at all.

“I should get back,” Roger says, and Rafa doesn’t think it’s entirely his own wishful thinking, the faint reluctance in the way he says it.

“Wait, can I get a picture of you together?” Xisca interrupts, just as Roger is stepping away, and he laughs and says, “Sure, of course,” and in another moment he’s slinging an arm around Rafa’s shoulders, easy as anything, leaning in just a little bit despite Rafa’s stained white coat. Rafa tries to put his arm around Roger’s shoulders in return but it feels a little like it might look as though he’s trying to put him in a headlock, so without thinking he lets his arm drop to cross Roger’s back, to rest a hand at Roger’s waist. Roger smells warm and good, like expensive aftershave. Rafa thinks he must smell like sweat and the fish course.

His smile feels taut and slightly desperate as Xisca fiddles interminably with the camera settings before she gets her shot, but it’s worse when she says, “Okay, guys, thank you,” and Roger’s arm slides away, a weight that Rafa instantly misses. The palm of his hand drags against Rafa’s shoulderblades as he steps away, and Rafa’s hand rests for just a moment at the dip at the base of his spine, warm through his fine shirt. He manages to keep it together.

“It was good to meet you,” Roger says, with a smile, flicking his hair back with another graceful movement of his hand. He turns to Xisca. “Send me a copy of that, will you?”

“Of course,” Xisca says, beaming, and then, horribly, she winks at Rafa. Rafa looks away, but Roger doesn’t seem to have noticed.

“I guess I’ll see you,” Roger says.

Rafa nods. “For sure.” He watches Roger walk away, down the hall, and disappear back through the swing doors into the restaurant.

“You and your swooning inner teenager can thank me later,” Xisca says, dropping the camera into his hands. He and Roger Federer smile back at himself from the little screen, real, and surreal.


End file.
